クレジーチェン　エルピスの鎖

Completion date: September 12, 2026

Play time: 35 hours – Longest game to date for otome I believe. This is a super long game. As per usual I did a plot summary. My thoughts are always at the end of each route’s plot summaries.

[Translation] B’s-LOG June 2026 Edition of Crazy Cha!n: Elpis no Kusari Director Comments

Recommended play order: Rex > Vardis > Cronoll > Flatnis > Lise > G o d

Final Thoughts

Flatnis, Lise, and G o d routes are locked in order.

Content included: Salvation ends (happy ends), notable bad ends

Not included: After stories

All my reviews contain spoilers. You have been warned!

Common Route

A team of soldiers are at the mercy of an evil dragon who is about to breathe its wrath and fury onto them. As they embrace for their deaths, a mysterious girl – our protagonist Sophia – leads a team of men charging into their enemy, declaring that she will not allow anyone to die. In the back, G o d narrates that this is a story that deviates from what we know from Joan of Arc; this is a story of the saintess that was born to end the “thousand-year war”. How did they get to this point? The common route begins with the trailer playing.

In the west, a prosperous country stands: Exrattle (エクスラトル; capital is Orpea/オーピア). In the northeast end is a village called Parale (パラル), where Sophia is born and raised to live a peaceful life as the next saintess of the country, alongside her extremely beautiful servant Lise, whom she is able to catch from a falling tree in her arms. Even though Lise is her “servant”, he is known for being sickly and weak to the point even children are stronger in terms of strength than him. However, he has a natural talent for casting spells.

From as early as history can be recorded, Exrattle (a country that mainly uses spells) has been warring with the neighbouring Regenate (リージェネート, a country known for their machinery), who recently occupied an important bordering city called Orltie (オルティエ). With this development, it is inevitable that Sophia, as the current saintess “Joan of Arc”, will be sent to the frontlines. The first Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake for being a “witch” after being judged in an unfair trial by the Regenate inquisitors. Even though the Exrattle King at the time tried to restore her name by demanding a retrial, he was ultimately unsuccessful. Thus, began the cycle of reincarnation of Joan of Arcs appointed by the god overseeing Exrattle, blessed by the church “the holy hieroglyph”/聖刻.

When Sophia sleeps, she is able to talk to the whimsical G o d who is the patron god of Exrattle. Every single Joan has not lived past the age of 19, yet Sophia is 24. Unlike the other Joans, Sophia dislikes being used against her will for a calling that she never signed up for. Hence, she flat out wants to quit being the saintess and argues with G o d.

The next day, Sophia’s village is attacked by monsters called nagekumono – “the crying ones” who are inhumane creatures that make unintelligible sounds that sound like cries of despair. After Sophia & Lise defeat the monsters, they learn that a priest who has arrived from the church by the name of Vardis has helped evacuate the people in the meantime.

Vardis officially asks on behalf of the church for Sophia to execute her duty as saintess & fight Regenate at the city of Orltie. However, before that, he asks her to make a detour to another city to meet the king of Exrattle, who at this point is a puppet of the prime minister.

On the way to their next destination, Vardis recalls the five gods that control this world who are all named after emotions:

• Sadness, who controls defence and memories/recording the past.
• Wrath, who controls offence and warfare.
• Pure love (i.e. G o d), who controls regeneration and healing.
• Mad love (the god of Regenate), who is good at debuffing the enemy.
• Indulgence, who controls psychological manipulation & communication.

Each god is supposed to have a saintess. However, Sophia is the only living saintess in this world. In fact, Regenate hasn’t had a saintess almost in the past thousand years.

At their first night on the road, they meet Isaac – a mysterious knight that draws an exclaim of surprise from G o d within Sophia’s mind. Isaac parts ways with them in the morning while Sophia arrives at the city and is told that each Joan of Arc receives a test to see if they are real, by identifying who the king (who has not shown his face and lets his prime minister run the show) is out of the crowd. Sophia admits that her connection with G o d is probably the weakest out of all generations of Joans. Combined with her intention to quit being a saintess, G o d ain’t giving her no hints, so she needs to do some good old detective work in the city.

She meets Alt, a young boy whose dream is to be a bard and travel the world & makes eye contact with some red-haired young knight at the gates who seems to be a huge fan of “Joan of Arc” & is exchanging letters with the current king?!

At the ceremony, Sophia using her wits deduces that the king is not in the room at all, passing the test. After a celebration with Vardis & Lise she returns to her chambers and hears a noise…

The red-haired knight from the day introduces himself as Rex and says he is Joan’s biggest fan, hence he wants to serve as her personal knight and protect her! Sophia says despite the odd visitation, please come in and chat I guess, to which he replies I can’t, I’m stuck in the window because of my big manly biceps and thighs and pecs!! For some reason Rex has pissed off the wrong people in the knights’ order and is told to be on standby. However, not wanting to waste his time and talent, he decided to try for a chance of serving Sophia instead & actually do something meaningful.

Rex & Sophia enter Regenate occupied-Orltie undercover to collect intel at a bar. A few Regenate knights start sexually harassing Sophia, who tries to endure it for the sake of collecting information and not causing a scene. A gunshot is heard. The lone-wolf mercenary Cronoll fired it as a warning, helping out Sophia, but denies it saying he only did it because those knights are disturbing him enjoying his evening.

When Sophia chases him out into the streets to thank him, Cronoll coldly replies that he wants nothing to do with a “fraud saintess” like Sophia, who is a saintess in name only and has actually done nothing for the peace of the people in Orltie or anywhere. Sophia asks Cronoll to help her in liberating Orltie without bloodshed – not as her soldier, but as her tour guide so she can learn more about the culture & inhabitants of this city. In her dream, Sophia asks G o d what exactly constitutes as 救国 or “salvation (of the country)” as Joan, but he does not give her a straight answer, and only says “liberation of Orltie is the first step”.

Two weeks later, under the gates of Orltie, Sophia announces her identity and proposes to the mayor of the city for a popular vote by the inhabitants of Orltie to decide which country they will swear loyalty to, to avoid bloodshed. Ricordo, who is later revealed to be a scholar and not actually a Regenate citizen, arrives to represent Regenate in what now appears to be a presidential debate between him and Sophia for the ownership of Orltie.

Sophia’s plan now becomes clear: in the weeks that she spent touring the city with Cronoll, she got to befriend the people of Orltie and live as one of them, while defending them against the crying ones. Hence, people voted for her over Ricordo and won Sophia the election.

Winning the election is great but this doesn’t mean Regenate accepts this result. Claiming that like the previous Joans, Sophia is very dangerous and should be executed for deceiving the people so easily, Flatnis easily overpowers Lise & Rex and clashes blades directly with his rival… and falls in love. Declaring that if he wins today, he will take her back to Regenate and make him his wife, the two begin a new round of battle.

The fight is cut short with Isaac breaking up the two, on orders of Flatnis’ boss – the grand inquisitor of Regenate, Knox. Knox tells both parties that the crying ones seemed to have developed a new sentience and stronger. Hence, this is not time for the two countries to fight each other, but should turn their attention to their common enemy. To learn more about the crying ones, the crew joined by Flatnis, will go to Ricordo’s refuge & Vardis’ home – Ryumeitou (I’m just going to translate phonetically even though it should be translated to “the tower that represents the alliance with the dragon”). Before you leave for Ryumeitou, you will have a scene with one LI depending on whose affection is highest.

Thanks to Cronoll’s speeding while driving, the crew arrive at Ryumeitou. Flatnis mentions that the very first Joan befriended a “heart dragon” who then decided to also protect mankind with its powers and formed this tower. Ricordo teases Vardis to introduce “them”. It turns out Ricordo’s body actually inhabits two personalities or souls, twin sister and brother Rico and Rudo. The two became stuck in the same body after a botched experiment. One specializes in spell-craft and the other machinery. They also served as Vardis’ “parents”, adopting him and teaching him everything he knows in this tower.

Ricordo explains that the crying ones are able to use black magic called “danjiki”. While details are unknown, it has been demonstrated that if humans use danjiki they will turn into crying ones. Ricordo tells the group to start searching for clues at the last place these strong crying ones were sighted.

Paired up with Flatnis and under the convenient guidance of a black cat, the two discover a cave where humans were experimented on and turned into crying ones, with evidence of danjiki being used. Reporting back to the church, they share that this must be doings of the cult “Oz” whose goal is to create their own god & exterminate the existing ones. Oz also has its own “saintess” who is a witch. The witch’s goal is to kill saintess, or Joan.

An alarm breaks out in the peaceful silence of Ryumeitou. Around 2000 crying ones are sighted approaching the tower, making this the most coordinated and largest invasion yet. The crew responds to this crisis. Sophia finally meets the infamous witch of Oz – Libitina, and the black cat that’s been roaming the halls of the tower, who apparently can talk and goes by the name of Casper, and gives orders to Libitina?!

Libitina and Sophia fight briefly. However, the heart dragon awakens. Addressing it as an entity called “calamity”, Libitina says her task is done here and disappears with Casper, leaving Sophia, her crew, and the united front of Exrattle & Regenate soldiers to face this beast.

Isaac appears and fends off “calamity”. However, he vomits blood and starts transforming into a crying one. He has used danjiki in the past? or now to protect everyone?

Desperate, Sophia cries internally for G o d to bestow her power. G o d cheerfully replies now that she believes in him, he will make a deal with her. For great power comes with great restraints. Should she break the “promise”, she will pay a great price… We then have a replay of the opening scene, where Sophia leads everyone to defeat Calamity.

After Calamity is defeated, the crew is greeted by Exrattle’s prime minister Durand as well as Calme aka Rex’s older brother & the current captain of Exrattle’s knights’ order.

Durand congratulates Sophia for minimizing casualties, but there was one – Isaac. Not wanting to transform into a monster, Isaac begged Sophia to kill him.

Everyone returns to Sophia & Lise’s village to attend the celebration for La Pucelle, an annual festival held to commemorate all the Joan of Arcs that have sacrificed themselves for Exrattle. Alt makes a guest appearance and sings a song that talks about how each Joan of Arc is not allowed to fall in love; for when they kiss their beloved on the lips, they lose all their powers.

Sophia confronts G o d and says now that she knows how to rid herself of her saintess role, the next step is… to start dating! Flustered, G o d places the chains of love on Sophia that will appear when she falls in love with someone and feel electrical shocks. If the love is mutual, the other party will also see it. G o d says by doing this, even if Sophia wants to be romantically involved with someone, the other party will not agree because they won’t want to be the reason Exrattle lose their saintess. Frustrated, Sophia yells “just you wait, I will save this country and fall in love!” before being thrown out of the dream.

Rex de Couracie (CV: Ura Kazuki)

Rex is the definition of “all muscle and less brain” but he along with Lise are probably the most loyal two to Sophia. His brother Calme gave him a timeout from knight duty because he broke some knight’s code to help villagers. He also has ridiculous strength without the use of any spells.

In the common route, Sophia catches him sulking because he lost an argument with Cronoll who mocked him for blinding believe in a fraud saintess like Sophia, and he didn’t know how to effectively fight back with words. He wished he was smarter and able to defend Sophia better in front of others so they could see his resolve and join him too. Sophia tells Rex that the fact he has unwavering faith in her, regardless of how good he is at convincing others, gives her strength to continue fighting on behalf of the people and for him. He doesn’t need to change; the way he is so honest with himself & others is moving people around him and changing them for the better.

Resting in the village, Sophia receives a letter from Rex asking her to visit him & Calme in the capital. Sophia takes him up on the offer as she isn’t having luck finding a boyfriend in the village anyway. She arrives at the house that was awarded to her and crew by Durand to see Rex waiting at the front. He has been waiting for her every day since sending the letter, without receiving a response from Sophia! Omg…

Hiding the part she wants to quit being Joan, Sophia tells Rex that she’s looking for a boyfriend. Rex is super confused but is determined to help his Joan out. He tells her that he knows the perfect man who will be a match for Sophia…

Calme also did not receive any warning from his own brother. While he is surprised and somewhat puzzled, he accepts the matchmaking offer and gentlemanly courts Sophia, asking to start as friends and date with the intention of marriage.

At night, Rex comes asking to house-share with Sophia because something happened at his residence and he got kicked out. Rex is super naive and doesn’t even realize that now he’s living alone with a woman until Sophia points it out. But where can he go otherwise? So Sophia takes him in.

Rex takes Sophia out on a day off to show her the city. They run into little children who all look up to “Rex oniichan” and asks if Sophia is his girlfriend. They pass by a jewelry store and hear a couple bickering. The woman throws a bottle of water at her man but accidentally wets Rex instead. The woman apologizes profusely. Rex isn’t angry at all & gently consoles the couple. Sophia asks why Rex isn’t angry for even one bit for taking collateral damage from an unrelated argument, to which Rex appears puzzled because “anger” is never an emotion that’s a part of him…?

Rex & Calme each lead a fraction of the knights and have a match against each other. Unsurprisingly, Calme defeats Rex easily, who doesn’t feel sad at all and instead cheers for his own brother. Sophia encourages Rex to strive for better next time and defeat Calme in the future. Rex becomes confused again and asks her why. Sophia replies “because you are my knight, so beat him next time, Rex.”

Calme and Sophia go out on another date, but they talk about topics that friends not lovers would, including about Rex. Calme asks what Sophia thinks of Rex. Sophia says Rex is a great knight but doesn’t seem to have enough anger towards his enemies. Calme agrees, saying that on the battlefield, the desire to protect transforms into anger and becomes the power of the wielder of the blade. Such is the tradition of de Couracie, who are descendants of La Hire. Calme worries that without unleashing his own “wrath”, Rex will never be as strong as him.

In the meantime, Vardis visits Orltie and catches up with Rex. Upon hearing Rex is setting up his brother with Sophia, he expresses surprise and says “I thought you would be the one instead of him”. Rex becomes defensive and says Sophia & Calme are a great match, and that he would be so happy if they become his family together, or would he…?

Sophia returns from her date and sees pouty Rex waiting for her outside. Sophia told him about the stuff they talked about, earning a confused response from Rex, because these are not romantic topics at all?

Durand summons Sophia and asks her to go on a mission with Rex. Their destination used to be inhabited by a now-executed witch 6 years ago – when Calme was stationed there as a knight before his promotion – is now showing activity of danjiki. Rex also expresses interest in Regenate’s cars. Rex starts praising the enemy for developing such sophisticated technology before Sophia stops him. He really has no hatred towards anyone to the point it is extreme. Rex apologizes for being so careless and wonders if he will ever surpass Calme, being the clumsy person he is.

In the forest, Rex, starting to realize his feelings for Sophia, shyly asks to hold her hand while escorting her through the woods. “As a knight, all I get to do is assist you through missions, while my brother gets to treat you like a lady… This is so… unfair…”

They find the danjiki in the woods, that appear to be imitating spells of “wrath and report back to Ryumeitou. Calme asks Sophia on a dinner date while Rex sulks. To Rex’s surprise, the invitation extends to him. At this point, Calme can tell that his little brother is the one who actually loves Sophia. In private, Sophia also explains to Rex that Calme and her friend-zoned each other. “You know, while he respects me for being an accomplished person, he really hasn’t seen my charms as a woman…” Rex disagrees and blurts out that he has been seeing Sophia as a lady this whole time. The lady that has had all this faith in him as a novice knight, that allowed him to serve by her side. He wanted to be watched by her… forever. Sophia is beautiful, strong, noble, yet gentle… Eh, Sophia, what are those chains growing out of your body?

Durand and Ricordo conclude that those danjiki were written with the purpose of awakening the god of wrath, who has been in slumber for some time now. However, for what purpose? Another investigation is needed, this time joined by Calme & Vardis. Calme remarks that he doesn’t know about any “witch” here 6 years ago despite being stationed here (that’s a cap and we all know it). In fact, the destination is very close to the village where Rex was born.

With Calme’s encouragement, Rex tells Sophia about how he became Calme’s brother, despite not looking alike or actually related by blood. Rex’s village was destroyed 15 years ago. As the sole survivor of the massacre, he was found by Calme who invited him to the family. Rex’s village believed in turning the other cheek and never harbouring aggressive thoughts towards others. That year, there was a starvation so the neighbouring village came to pillage Rex’s village. Defenceless, all the villagers did was run before being mercilessly killed by the bandits. Rex was the eldest in his family. His little brother became angry and went against the village rules to “never do harm to others no matter what” and vowed to make the enemy pay. However, Rex disagreed so his brother left him to seek revenge on his own. His brother then died in the process of fighting the bandits alone. As now the only survivor in the village, Rex waited in the snow, hungry and weak, left with only wrath towards himself and his cowardice, until he was discovered by a young Calme, who tells him to be wrathful of this world who chases him to the doorsteps of death, as this wrath will become his will to live on.

Despite joining the de Couracie family and becoming a knight, Rex knew deep down he was never able to “resent anyone more than himself” and has been losing himself on the path to knighthood, especially after breaking the knight’s code in order to save villagers – a good deed that became punished. It wasn’t until he saw Sophia & her leadership as well as faith in him that became his life’s guiding light, and his new definition of “knighthood”.

They discover more danjiki that are drawn after the spells of wrath, some sentient crying ones, and eventually Libitina who successfully lands a surprise attack critically wounding Sophia. As Libitina closes in for the finishing blow, she and Casper feel a strong presence of “wrath” that can match the level of “him”…

Before Rex loses control and kills Libitina, Calme arrives at the scene & captures Libitina/Casper. Sophia is carried back to her house to recover. While Lise/Cronoll/Vardis are also there with Rex, upon Sophia waking up and Rex saying he wants to take responsibility for her, they all look at each other like 🥴 and find a dumb excuse to leave the house so the two can be alone. Rex starts apologizing for being useless and not protecting Sophia in time, but Sophia tells him she’s so happy that he awakened the ability to be angry for the first time in his life, and on her behalf.

Sophia ruffles his hair. Rex says she treats him too sweetly and adds that it should be Calme that is in his place right now. Sophia challenges him “is that what you really want”? To which Rex replies, “No, I don’t want Calme to be here. I want to be the only person that can be treated by you this way. Even if it’s Calme, I will not give up this place for him. Because, you are the most important person in the world to me…” The chains reappear on Sophia but the camera pans to Calme formally breaking it off with Sophia saying they should stop friendzoning each other and leave each other alone lmao.

Calme & Durand tell Sophia to destroy the scattered danjiki in the land. Meanwhile, we get another slice-of-life segment where we get to see Rex in glasses and sleepwear and excitedly tell Sophia about his love for strength training and growing vegetables. Sophia thinks to herself, ah, I really do like him that way.

With Libitina captured and awaiting trial, Regenate & Exrattle seem to come to a truce. Durand even awards Sophia a badge the honour her for achieving “salvation” of her country. Now, it appears that nothing stands between Sophia and her falling in love and breaking free from those pesky chains imposed on her.

Rex still thinks Sophia is going out with Calme, and acts calm (see what I did there) and congratulates her that she can finally fall in love with him. However, being the honest person he is, he is not very good at hiding his sadness. Sophia tells Rex that she is very upset if Rex truly feels this way, because she wanted him to feel angry, frustrated that another man that is not him gets her hand. Rex still believes that he is not worthy of Sophia, saying she will be much happier with his brother than a clumsy knight like him. Sophia interrupts him saying, “Who I am the happiest with is decided by me. Who said you are unable to make me happy? The happiest moments of my life so far were spent with you.” Sophia comes clean about G o d’s curse & her intention of quitting as Joan. Rex is overjoyed that his feelings are reciprocated but backs our hearing Sophia will lose her powers saying he cannot deprive Exrattle of their saintess, no matter if she’s achieved salvation or not. This ends in Sophia declaring to Rex “Just you wait, I will make you fall in love with me!”

The two begin a cat and mouse chase around the city, where Sophia is the cat & Rex runs away from her advances. Rex tries to move back into his dorm, only to find out Calme trying to matchmake the two saying his new dorm also accidentally got assigned to someone else. Calme tells Rex to “man up before it’s too late”.

At the tavern, Sophia & Rex encounter Alt who offers to sing them the song of a fallen angel 6 years ago. She is the same executed witch from Sophia’s last mission, only she was a nurse in the battlefield who would help soldiers from both sides. However, she was captured in the end and accused of manipulating and influencing people’s thoughts, or witchcraft, and burned at the stake.

The next match between Calme & Rex at the barracks ends in Rex’s victory thanks to a bit of strategy from Sophia, where he resolves to win on behalf of Sophia as her knight. This is the very first taste of victory that Rex has acquired against his brother, and he serves this victory to his Joan, who kisses him on the forehead.

As reward for his victory, Rex asks Sophia to sit in his lap. Apparently, he was thinking about this out loud before the battle, which made his soldiers go like bruh. Flatnis visits on some diplomatic mission and tells Sophia two pieces of information: 1. Libitina is going to be executed in a week. 2. The “angel” case 6 years ago likely was a wrongful conviction. In the meantime, Rex faces his feelings and is determined to confess to Sophia his love.

As he returns home and literally says I love you, a massive earthquake erupts with the sky turning red. The god of wrath has been awakened by Calme who vows “revenge against the country that wronged my love”. The game dropped hints that Calme was involved with the “angel” that was tried and burnt at the stake six years ago. He was one of her patients who fell in love with her. The god of wrath is arrogant, refusing to carry out the orders of a mere human. Libitina & Casper appear, having escaped captivity with Calme’s help, cast danjiki on the god to force him to obey Calme’s wish of destroying the entire country of Regenate, including every life. By awakening Wrath, Libitina/Casper/Oz gains access to control all the crying ones and unifying them.

Sophia & Rex embrace each other and confess their love before heading into the final battle. Rex kisses her on the cheek.

Rex tells Calme that he cherishes all the moments he spent growing up alongside him. However, meeting new friends & the woman he loves – Sophia – has truly taught him the meaning of “wrath” that arises from the urge to protect. This time, he will also protect Sophia & what she stands for.

Sophia faces off against Libitina who tells Sophia she hates this world more than anyone else. She hates this world, the humans who rely on the saintess, the gods who involve saintesses against their will in their battles, everyone except Casper. Sophia scoffs and says she loves this world so will not Libitina get what she wants.

Desperate, Libitina and Casper want to implode and take everyone with them. However, Knox appears and neutralizes the situation along with the voice of the god of indulgence. Knox announces that the death of Calme’s loved woman – Marina – was a mistrial. However, it’s already too late. The realm created by awakening Wrath will consume Calme’s existence. Just like how Sophia delivered the final blow to Isaac, Rex with Sophia by his side, bids his brother farewell with his blade, promising him to grow into an outstanding knight that will make him proud.

In the aftermath, Rex recalls him and Calme as children/teenagers. Rex tells Calme that he wants to be a big knight one day to protect his princess, to which Calme replies “instead of a real princess, you should look for a strong girl that fights by your side.” He is grateful that he has Sophia.

The ring comment ended up full circle as Rex proposes to Sophia formally after he is promoted to the second-in-command of the knights’ order. The two share their first kiss with Sophia hearing her chains shatter for good.

The after story is quite cute as well. Sophia gets jealous of dainty cute girls confessing to Rex~

Bad end: Calme defeats and kills Rex. Furious, Sophia defeats & desecrates Calme’s corpse. Afterwards, G o d congratulates Sophia for achieving salvation because Regenate is destroyed by crying ones.

Thoughts:

1. This was a wholesome route where Rex was really like a big puppy in human form. There’s always something special about straightforward, knightly red heads… He is fiercely loyal to Sophia & will give up everything in the world to protect her. The blushing moments he had when Sophia took the lead and pursued him were delicious. For those who enjoy roleplaying as the onee-san and tired of the shy wallflower MCs in J-otome, this is your route! Their relationship dynamic is going to be more one-sided as I can’t see a world where Rex doesn’t listen what Sophia says and wants haha.
2. In the pregame ranking I put him second. While he dropped a bit after completion, none of this is due to his fault – his competition was simply too strong!
3. This route (and game in general) is very long. The balance of romance & plot, slice-of-life & action was carefully achieved. Some people complained about Calme but I felt it was alright? The sub characters in this game … many so delicious but un-romanceable, certainly not Calme after knowing his story, unless….?
4. I get the writer wants to showcase the transformation from Rex being a doormat with low self-esteem to someone who starts voicing his wants, expressing “anger” or defending others with fierce loyalty, but the part about his village’s tradition was so creepy… for example, when the bandits were breaking into his home & literally killing people, his mother was still sympathizing with the enemy… I don’t care what the village bible says, but that is not how humans operate; this part really weirded me out. The concept got a little too idealistic and abstract.
5. Mmmm these muscles. Even though I usually like the skinny type I’ll appreciate them just this once.

Vardis (CV: Yamashita Seiichirou)

Vardis is the womanizing priest who claims to love and respect all women equally for their beauty. Other than Sophia being the literal holy maiden that his church worships, perhaps Sophia got his attention by telling him “don’t judge me by my cover. I hope you can also appreciate me for who I am on the inside.”

Running into Vardis in the street, she is shocked to find out that he acts very awkwardly around children, while being a complete Casanova around women. He doesn’t know how to deal with a crying little girl and asked for Sophia’s help. After helping the girl, he asks if Sophia is going to mock him. Sophia says why would I laugh at you for wanting to help someone else?

After the common route, Sophia goes to Ryumeitou for some errand. She finds Vardis there who says Ricordo is his teacher so he is still looking for a way to separate the two people using the same body. She tells Vardis about her plan to find a husband. While he constantly makes the moves on her, Sophia doesn’t take him seriously (because bro probably says this to everyone and has been showering Sophia in flowery flattery since they met) and they kind of friendzone each other for the next while. Vardis seriously plans out ways for Sophia to “encounter” men at Ryumeitou such as the old tactic of pretending to be lost and asking for directions. However, hilariously, Sophia always ends up unintentionally matchmaking the man with another woman (e.g. the guy is helping Sophia with the direction, they run into a girl who is actually looking for a lost item, then the guy gets the hots for the girl, and Sophia tries to set them up).

During drinks at night, Vardis shares with Sophia that he lost his parents at the age of eight, until Rico & Rudo (at the time, still separate people) took him to Ryumeitou and taught him everything he knows today. He also shares that he has a natural attraction towards women, as even when he was born as a baby, he apparently started all cute with the nurse… He has a bit too much to drink and blushes, while muttering to himself “one day, I will become a real man…” but we don’t know what he means here yet.

At the library, Vardis & Sophia come across historical books talking about Joan of Arc’s relationship with La Hire & Jean de Dunois, as well as her trial by Pierre Cauchon. The concept of alchemy is also introduced in this game but not elaborated. Outside, they hear a song together dedicated to the first Joan of Arc. Moved by music, Vardis kisses Sophia’s hand gently, saying it was an honour to listen to and enjoy this song with her. He tells her to not forget he is still in the race for her love as well. Sophia asks if he does this with everyone. He replies he only does this with people who want to fall in love. Sophia basically says okay okay I know you’re a man, but you’re coming onto me really strong and I’m not ready for this yet.

Sophia runs into Cronoll running errands at the tower. They deliver some pastries to a classroom and finds Vardis being surrounded by children. Again, he seems to be frozen from apprehension and not comfortable around those kids. Sophia pulls him aside and asks what his deal is. He replies he just feels uneasy around children because they are so vulnerable.

They head out and it starts to rain. Sophia offers for Vardis to stay at her place (damn are hotels not real?). After she falls asleep, Vardis is seen creeping into her room, talking to himself about attacking her “so that I can become a real man”, but decides against it in the end.

Sophia continues to unsuccessfully find a boyfriend but matchmakes a lot of couples in the process. She runs into Alt who sings her the song of the alchemist this time. He sings of the philosopher’s stone & the Bluebeard myth (one saying is that this came from Gilles de Rais, who is also known for raping and murdering young children).

Sophia walks into a heated argument between Ricordo and Vardis. Ricordo refuses to be separated into two because “there is research left that we can only do when we are still as one”. Vardis, concerned for his teachers’ welfare, doesn’t understand why they insist on continuing being cramped in the same body. Sophia offers to help Vardis with finishing Ricordo’s research first, then separating their bodies. Vardis asks why Sophia is willing to invest so much in him & Ricordo, to which Sophia playfully replies “well if I waste too much time on this and don’t have time to find a boyfriend, I might fall in love with you and make you mine~” Vardis laughs and tells Sophia to not forget these words. He then adds that while Sophia is very cute and makes his heart flutter, “I am a selfish person who places my interests above everyone else’s. Even someone as cute as you will not change my mind.”

To complete Ricordo’s research, Sophia/Vardis/now hired Cronoll need to obtain a special type of gemstone only found in the god of indulgence’s forest, which is known for casting hallucinations on intruders as the god’s “trial”. Even for someone as fearless as Sophia, there is one thing that scares her: ghosts.

Sophia ends up seeing the ghosts and screams. After she gets rid of the illusions, she finds Vardis in a cave with a bloody dungeon full of dated corpses. Vardis… appears turned on by this scene and is laughing…? Seeing Sophia, he comes to his senses and desperately says he didn’t do any of this. Sophia replies, of course, I will always believe in you, why are you so tense?

After they go outside to regroup with Cronoll, they meet a rabbit who introduces themself as a servant of the god of indulgence. The rabbit also nonchalantly tells them “oh you want the jewels? That’s easy. Just kill me. My eyes are the jewels~” The rabbit turns to Vardis and says I’ve felt your scent before~ Didn’t you come to my master one thousand years ago begging for him to create the philosopher’s stone? While the group hesitates, Libitina appears with Casper. The rabbit hides in Vardis’ robes as he makes a run.

On the way, the rabbit asks Vardis why he is risking his life to defend it. Does it make a difference if you hand me over to Casper? I’m going to be killed either way~ Vardis, wounded, replies that all this life he has never protected anyone before. On the other hand, Sophia who would always proudly announces she will save everyone, has inspired him. He is going to prove himself to her that he too can do it, so he doesn’t get looked down by her!

The rabbit tells Vardis that seeing him defend it so fervently made it realize he is not the same “someone” it recognized from scent. In fact, it’s willing to give up its life to make his wish come true. After all, it has lived for over a thousand years and quite bored of this world. It also cryptically says “the drive within you to be ‘just’ has been planted there by a someone a long, long time ago~”.

Either way, even though a bit confused, the crew successfully reports back to Ricordo with the jewels, who announces their research is in creating a homunculus to be able to transfer people’s souls in. In fact, that’s how they accidentally ended up in the same body in the first place; it was during one of the experiments.

Since the cave incident, Vardis has ben acting weirdly. He stopped flirting with women, is extra scared around children, and started suffering from a bad case of insomnia. Sophia tries to ask him what’s going on, but he only cryptically talks about how dreams and real life is closer to blending into one, and not comfortable sharing. However, he finds Sophia’s voice and presence calming his mind down. Rex suggests that Vardis move in with Sophia so she can soothe him, fend away the nightmares, and make him able to fall sleep again. At night, Sophia, pretending to be asleep, hears Vardis get up and say weird things “my soul will never disappear all for one purpose… I did nothing wrong. What is wrong is this world for taking this person away from me…” He takes out his blade saying “when that person returns… I will curse those men with this blood” and gestures to cut his wrist. Sophia speaks up and stops Vardis, who loses consciousness, before muttering “that foolish god… he is getting in the way of my plan of reuniting with her…”

Sophia consults Lise and Ricordo, who say it’s odd that he would do things in his sleep like this. It’s almost like he’s possessed by someone else. The next night Sophia hears Vardis? getting up again. This time he comes up close and says Sophia is so adorable and gorgeous, more than “the person he is obsessed with”. The chains start forming in front of Sophia…

Sophia confesses to Vardis the next day who is surprised at why she would like an unserious priest like him. Vardis blushes because deep down he likes her too, but immediately panics and backs out when Sophia told him about the truth behind finding a husband and losing her powers. Sophia gets upset and claims I know you like me too, I won’t let you decide my fate for me!

Vardis runs off to a hill to cool himself down. He tells himself he can’t catch feelings for Sophia now, not after he’s been approaching her with a specific goal in mind all this time… Casper appears and instead addresses him as “alchemist” and tells him to accept his true identity. Vardis is in denial until Casper shows him an arm bone belonging to a tortured child. Vardis breaks down. The scene fades.

Sophia sees Vardis come home. As she greets him, he jumps and attacks Sophia with powerful danjiki. Sophia struggles to fight him and is almost killed until Ricordo arrives. Ricordo asks Vardis if this has anything to do with his ancestor. Desperately wanting to remain himself, Vardis still gets taken over by another personality who introduces himself as Gilles de Rais who has been reincarnated in his successors every single generation due to his strong obsession with the first Joan of Arc. By experimenting and torturing innocent children, he advanced the field of alchemy, as well as invented the first danjiki, all in order to revive the first Joan of Arc.

Vardis/Gilles is taken into custody but interrogation attempts are unsuccessful. From a young age, Vardis has always anticipated and feared the day he would be taken over by Gilles and cause mass murders of children. Hence, he has been afraid to come close to children. He is so afraid of losing himself he has decided to kill the current Joan of Arc so Gilles cannot get his hands on her and hopefully will be quelled within him. Ricordo also says they have been doing homunculus research so that they can get Vardis’ own soul into a separate body, so he doesn’t lose himself one day.

Sophia tells Durand she will interrogate Gilles herself. She convinces Gilles to let go of Vardis’ body temporarily because if he doesn’t comply, they will simply execute him. Given his soul can only possess his offspring, and Vardis doesn’t have any and is the last of his bloodline, he will be permanently extinguished.

Vardis returns and wraps his fingers around Sophia’s neck, commending her courage for coming alone and assuming he will not kill her. He says based on his research, only when he kills the current Joan and bathes in her blood, will Gilles’ soul disintegrate due to despair. He postures to kill Sophia, who does not fight back. In fact, she tells Vardis she knows he doesn’t have what it takes to kill her, as his “morally just” life needs her alive. She asks why Vardis didn’t kill her when he lived under the same roof for so long. She asks if he’s ever even for a moment wondered what would happen if she were not the saintess.

Sophia places her hand on his. She tells him that she will make his dream come true. She will let him live a morally just life free from his ancestor with her alive. She will see to it that Ricordo’s research is successful.

Sophia asks G o d to do something about Vardis’ curse. She is met with the reply he doesn’t have the power to, but the god of indulgence does. He also tells Sophia that “salvation” actually has nothing to do with defeating Regenate but actually to do with his fellow gods. At the same time, Libitina tells Casper that she senses her “time is up”. Exasperated, Casper says he will never allow Libitina’s demise to happen.

Ricordo’s final experiment transferring Vardis’ soul to a homunculus will happen in the next five days. However, before that, Casper manages to steal the crucial jewels and coerced Ricordo to give up one of his two homunculi for his own needs.

The experiment is successful. Gilles’ soul is stuck in Vardis’ old body which is killed by Sophia & friends. However, as Ricordo goes to clean up the old body a splash of Gilles?/Vardis?’ blood creates a cut on their skin. Hmm…

Vardis’ own soul is successfully transferred to his new body, allowing him to reunite with Sophia as himself completely for the first time.

Sophia tells Vardis about the truth behind her chains. Vardis asks her to wait 30 years lmao?? First mainstream otome game featuring seniors’ love?? 😂

Knox informs Exrattle that Oz has disappeared from the world completely. Libitina and Casper have left the organization and evaporated. In a few days, Sophia runs into a powerless human girl holding a black cat; Casper has transferred Libitina’s soul into the homunculus and the two escaped their fate of witchcraft.

However, the world is inflicted by a powerful danjiki, with hands growing from the ground, abducting and killing children. Gilles has not yet let the protagonists have their last laugh. He managed to possess Ricordo through the wound he inflicted with his old body’s last breath. An illusion of the rabbit appears, instructing them to awaken the god of indulgence: “He only pays attention to those who can indulge in something more than he does~ so if you guys can give him a satisfactory answer to ‘what is indulgence’ he might just help you out~”

Sophia & Vardis face a possessed Ricordo and find out that there isn’t even a backup homunculus, because Ricordo gave it to Libitina earlier. The god of indulgence appears and asks them what in their definition is indulgence. Sophia replies that indulgence is love itself. To live on with the man she loves, even though everything in the world is working against it. Vardis replies indulgence is to live life to the fullest in spite of a cruel fate imposed on him since birth. No matter how much despair he is in, no matter how far he is away from salvation, he will continue to live on with hope – that to Vardis, is indulgence.

The god is very pleased with both their answers and says he will create an happy ending for both of them. He temporarily stops Gilles/Ricordo’s attacks. Ricordo tells Vardis to not hesitate and to finish them all in Ricordo’s body while they hold Gilles down. Tearfully, Vardis deals the killing blow-

In the aftermath, a weakened Indulgence talks to G o d and asks if he’s planned for this moment all along, calling G o d “gluttony-san”. G o d does not say much and only a chomping and swallowing sound effect is played. Regardless, Sophia has achieved “salvation”. Exrattle signs a truce with Regenate. Vardis gifts Sophia a timepiece as per family tradition, kisses her on the lips, and asks her to be his “family”.

Bad End: Sophia dies. Vardis falls into Gilles’ ways and also starts practicing “alchemy” on little kids to revive “his” beloved Joan.

Thoughts:

Vardis route left me feeling heavy and feeling for the fate he has gone through. A fate he never asked for, just like Sophia. In fact, for the three unlocked routes, all of them in their happy endings will lose someone that they regarded as family.

Gilles not sensing Sophia as the current Joan of Arc can be explained by him only being attracted to the first Joan, but after clearing the game you will see another reason also.

While I loved how beautiful and complex Vardis was as a character, ultimately there were many plot holes/inconsistencies that failed to convince me of the romance or the plot itself. The writer bit on more than they could chew and clearly had trouble keeping everything in-check.

1. Why would Ricordo fight with Vardis, whose wish was for Ricordo to separate into two again, if their goal is to do homunculus research? Isn’t that what Vardis also wants? Figure this out so you can separate the two souls in two different bodies? What are y’all fighting about?
2. If Gilles can possess Ricordo (someone not related to him) via cursed blood, why is he limited to possessing people in his bloodline? Can’t he just go out and slash some random person and take over? So this whole bloodline restriction doesn’t make sense.
3. Sophia was like, super flirty in this route, from beginning to end.

I just have a hard time understanding how the romance started? Initially, she was put off by how strong Vardis was coming onto her but in a few scenes she was telling Cronoll “oh if I remained single in a few years I’ll just marry Vardis~”. Officially, Sophia was shown to fall in love with him (“ah, I think I am falling for him…”) When Vardis made that cute little speech while she was pretending to be asleep, so why all the flirting before that? It doesn’t make sense. I am not convinced.

4. I LOL’ed when Rex proposed to Sophia to let Vardis move in to “soothe” him of his nightmares. Same when Vardis just had to sleep over at Sophia’s when there was rain outside at night. The whole damn city doesn’t have hotels? He can’t crash at the church? I get we need convenient plot devices but this is way too sloppy, lmao.

5. The writing also failed to separate Vardis’ attraction to Sophia from Gilles’ attraction to Joan of Arc. Now, if you played Lise route you will know Vardis’ reaction is genuine because Sophia is not the real Joan of Arc, but so far we didn’t know that. Vardis doesn’t know. While Gilles writing “attraction to women so my bloodline doesn’t end” is also funny, how do you justify Vardis’ attraction to Sophia beyond the lust in his DNA? This was left unanswered.

6. When Vardis broke down in the dungeon during the interrogation, saying his time with Sophia was the happiest in his life, that he got to “not worry about my problems and simply laugh as myself and have a good time” but how can you lol?? You literally approached Sophia with the intention of killing her. Your problems don’t go away. Like??? It just doesn’t make sense.

So yeah, while Vardis has gorgeous sprites & the story is touching, overall, this is my least favourite route in the game for the above reasons. It also has many parallels to St. Germain’s route from Code: Realize which I preferred much more.

Cronoll (CV: Furukawa Makoto)

Advertised as the “bickering partner” of Sophia, we go in expecting this cold & sarcastic mercenary being a big tsundere. He does not belong to either country and seems to serve his interests only. An avoider of crowds, he takes great care to polish his rifle, as he is unable to cast spells and use spell-infused bullets in his missions.

On her way to the capital, she finds a wounded Cronoll who defended traveling merchants from the crying ones. The merchants ask her to take him along to the capital for a doctor. Cronoll initially doesn’t want to but Sophia finds out it’s because he’s lost his earring during the fight. The earring is clearly very important to him. She searches for and finds the missing earring and he agrees to go with her.

Cronoll offers to pay Sophia because he doesn’t like his debts unpaid. They also stay in the same house because it was originally awarded to the entire crew. Sophia instead hires Cronoll to stick around for a month to help her find a husband, since this was her original objective anyway. Cronoll is like oh fuck my life but because he owes Sophia, agrees to the proposition. They run into Alt who says they’re a beautiful couple. Cronoll immediately gets upset and says “my taste isn’t that bad to like someone like her”. Sophia gets mad too and they start bickering.

Sophia drags Cronoll around the city to find a spot to “find her husband” while Cronoll is like bitch you suck you never gonna find a man lmaooo. He also has a strong dislike for the people of Exrattle & is uncomfortable around Durand, the current prime minister, for some reason. At a bar, Sophia gets hit on by a knight, but upon learning her identity, they all back away because she’s too good and accomplished for them.

Not only does Sophia have to get roasted by Cronoll, she also gets laughed at by G o d because every dating event she attends, guys initially like her but then back out because she’s the next Joan of Arc and too accomplished. G o d also confirms that Cronoll “is not blessed by any country/god” and is unable to cast spells.

Durand hears about Sophia’s quest for love and offers to introduce her to a high ranking official who will match her in power and status. However, he notes (much to Cronoll’s annoyance) that Cronoll is upset that he’s setting Sophia up with a supposedly good match.

Sophia meets Durand’s friend Dominic and goes out on a date with him. In the meantime, Cronoll wanders outside and finds Alt, who asks Cronoll to find a four-leaved clover with him. Some crying ones appear. However, they are not normal monsters. They somehow are able to conjure bow and arrow and shoot their target. Rex interrupts Sophia & Dominic’s date to notify them that the crying ones have been sighted. Sophia immediately pauses the date and goes to Cronoll’s rescue. With their backs to each other’s, they defeat the evolved crying ones.

Durand formally holds a meeting with Calme, Sophia, and Cronoll. He asks Sophia to investigate the new form of crying ones. Cronoll also volunteers to join, saying he doesn’t want to owe Sophia anything from saving him in the previous battle. Dominic also breaks up with Sophia because he ultimately prefers safety and wouldn’t want Sophia risking herself out there (and wants her to be more available for their relationship), and recognizes he is being too selfish and not a good match for her.

Durand asks Sophia & Cronoll what their thoughts on crying ones are, given so little is known about them. Sophia replies she thinks they should be “understood more” while Cronoll remains strongly dismissive saying they are good for nothing and should be eliminated from this world. Alt approaches Sophia & Cronoll and invites them to join a humble festival celebrating the currently hibernating god of sadness. Alt tells them a tale of back in the day, when Exrattle and the now extinct country blessed by Sadness were in battle, Sadness herself infiltrated Exrattle as a commoner and met an unusual combination for a couple. Seeing how this couple overcame their differences to love each other, Sadness was overcome with shame on how her people and the ones from Exrattle could not agree on their differences and live in peace, she started crying. And that is how the festival they are going to came to be. It is said if you bring an item of personal importance to you, Sadness will bless the attendee with a special personal memory, as she is also the god of memory.

The three attend the festival almost like dad, mom, and the child, while Cronoll teaches Sophia how to shoot a rifle in order to shoot down her desired prize at a game stand.

Cronoll tells Sophia that he lost his parents from a very young age to crying ones. That’s why he has such a deep hatred towards all of them. Snow starts to fall from the sky. This is the rumoured “blessing of Sadness”. When the snow falls on Sophia, she relives a memory of a young version of her with her parents. Cronoll relives a memory of his mother, who played and gifted him a flute, teaching him how to play. He takes out the flute and plays a song for Sophia to commemorate this special moment. Sophia becomes charmed by him but of course he laughs at her for blushing and what not and the two bicker again lmao.

Sophia & Cronoll find the cave hosting those sentient crying ones, who can not only use weapons but also speak in broken parts of human language. Of course this ends up being the work of Libitina/Casper. However, Libitina does not have any desire to fight in front of “them” and urges Sophia to think about what kind of creatures those crying ones really are. “They were brought into this world from someone else’s whimsy, and not of their own will. ” After they leave the cave, Cronoll becomes very upset because for this entire time he has been convincing himself that those are mindless, emotionless monsters. His fundamental world view is being challenged. Sophia tells him that she is trying to understand crying ones because she doesn’t know enough about them. She is not asking Cronoll to “turn the other cheek” or “be the other person”. She wants Cronoll to know he is never alone in his path.

Sophia & Cronoll go to Ryumeitou to do some research. However, everyone around them started forgetting things. The server forgot their orders, the customers forgot what they were going to do after they finish their meal… Flatnis calls in saying the same thing is happening in Regenate. So far, none of Sophia/Cronoll/Flatnis/Alt are affected. They wonder if this has to do with the recent rain at the festival, given this is all memory-related and ties back to the goddess of sadness.

However, this doesn’t last long as Sophia starts to forget things too. She forgets how to drive. In a desperate attempt to retain her memories, she recounts out loud that she is the current Joan of Arc, currently investigating why citizens are losing memories, the person beside her is her important… important what? Libitina appears unaffected but Sophia doesn’t remember who Libitina is either. Libitina wants to kill Sophia anyway and hurts Cronoll who protects her. A special danjiki is cast, taking the shape of serpents, protects Cronoll & Sophia, forcing their enemies to back off.

Sophia turns to Cronoll and asks “who are you?” Cronoll cannot believe this. All the moments they shared, memories created, how cruel god must be to let him remember and her forget everything. A distant memory plays in his mind. Growing up in a filthy jail cell, being called “the ugly and cursed product of human and a crying one“… He begins to transform… As he pulls away in shame, Sophia grabs him by the arm.

Cronoll tells Sophia that the earring is something his mother left behind to seal his true form and allow him to blend in society as a human. A blue danjiki mimicking the power of Sadness appears. The “blessed snow” that fell at the festival was likely a ruse by Oz to steal people’s memories and implant them into crying ones. Together, Sophia & Cronoll destroy the large danjiki.

Life seemingly returns to normal. When Sophia is outside, Cronoll finds himself missing her presence, and not wanting her to meet other men. We get more flashbacks of his past. His mother was human (a maid of the palace), taught him to play the flute, and gave him the earring before she died. His father was a sentient crying one. At the time, the late king was served by the previous prime minister before Durand, who was known for his corruption & at one point physically hunted Cronoll for sport. Cronoll tells Sophia that initially, his view of her was so negative because as the Joan of Arc for Exrattle, she seemed so naive and none of the Joans were able to actually eliminate the crying ones. So he felt they were so revered yet did nothing to actually help anyone. Or not enough. Sophia is empathetic and states it’s understandable for him to feel this way.

The chains appear once again but Cronoll does not acknowledge his feelings for Sophia (even though for the chains to be visible to them, they have to be in love with each other). Cronoll backs off literally being like, I’m a filthy mudblood, you will be prosecuted for having relations with me. Sophia goes, then let’s change the world, so you can live in a world where you no longer need to be ashamed of your identity! I will not let perceptions of others or even gods to stop how I feel towards you!

Sophia gets tipsy & goes to Cronoll’s room, saying she fully accepts the consequences of “entering a man’s room alone as a lady”. Cronoll is like oh lady I don’t think you do because

In Sophia’s next encounter with Alt, he talks about the ancestor of Exrattle, Charles VII. However, his story is less relevant here than in Flatnis’ route. They receive a message from Knox who informs them Libitina & Casper have been captured, inviting them to come interrogate Libitina. The proceedings will be shared between the two countries.

When they meet Libitina, she appears to be ill and suffering from a lot of pain. Interrogating Casper, who finally offers some information for the first time (usually he’s always telling Libitina to stop oversharing) in exchange for some medicine:

1. He confirms that Oz has been working with “someone” to create the danjiki that mimics the power of sadness to steal humans’ memories and implant them in crying ones, because this is much faster than teaching them skills.
2. He doesn’t have full control of the crying ones. The control is by proxy of that “someone” who is known to Sophia.
3. He is not allowed to disclose how crying ones came to be, but seems to know and says Sophia will meet them soon.

Before Casper could share who their co-conspirator was, an earthquake erupts. Rushing outside, Sophia finds crying ones roaming the city but acting as if they were humans because they have been implanted the memories of citizens. Sophia meets the now awakened god of sadness who says humans have been arrogant and dismissing other forms of life as well as waging endless wars on this land.

Durand appears as a servant of Sadness & reveals himself as a sentient crying one. He has been living on this world for near 150 years, initially as a non-sentient being. He basically got lucky and blessed by Sadness who allowed him to have memory, feelings, and learn/blend in human society. He also reveals that crying ones arose from “negative feelings of gods” which seems abstract now but more is referenced in future routes. He tells Cronoll that he can sense he is not fully human and “one of us”. He invites Cronoll to join the takeover of humanity by crying ones, who will rewrite society as he feels humans are unfit to rule this world. “I want to build a world where we crying ones will not be ashamed of our identities and also be allowed to govern.”

Sophia asks Cronoll how he feels about this after they rest and regroup in Ryumeitou. Cronoll replies that he was tempted for a second, and feels quite ashamed for it. Ultimately he thinks Durand is being too extreme. However, given his lived experiences he is also not comfortable in joining the force of taking Durand down. He asks Sophia to go on this battle alone. Sophia refuses, and challenges Cronoll to a duel. From the CG it’s pretty obvious who won:

With the help from everyone else, Cronoll & Sophia return to the capital and fight their way in the capital. They find Durand, who tells a story of how he met the only daughter of the previous prime minister and fell in love, before she was imprisoned by her own father. Everything else after we knew.

Even though he confirms Cronoll is his son, and that his son clearly doesn’t want the world he is building, Durand is too far gone and is determined to see his vision through. At this time, the god of indulgence interferes, and the hidden king of Exrattle finally makes his appearance:

With a hype final scene, Cronoll shoots Durand, who accepts defeat and wishes his son a happy life with the woman he loves. Charles the 21st claims his throne and becomes an outstanding king. Three months later, Cronoll & Sophia share their first kiss, breaking her chains. The goddess of Sadness is heard talking to G o d asking if this was all part of his plan, before she is devoured by him.

Bad End: Sophia is killed by Durand, who uses the powers of Sadness to create a delusion that Sophia is alive and living with him as his lover.

Thoughts:

I am absolutely floored by how good this route was, given I went in expecting “yet another tsundere route”. The tsundere/banter is probably only 1/3 of the route. I can’t even start to tell how good the romance was in this route. I dabble in CN romance novels at times, and always have a soft spot for 救赎文 where it’s like the MC is the ML’s only salvation & saves him from darkness (sometimes it goes both ways, MC/ML help each other and rise to the top). Sophia being the strong, badass heroine she is – I loved the way she handled the situations and became Cronoll’s rock and shoulder to lean on.

Cronoll is a complicated character that the writer took time and care to explain his motives well (thanks to this game’s ultra-long length), from his disdain for Sophia/Joans in general, why he stays to himself and acts distrustful of others yet remains a softie on the inside craving for someone to care about and love him.

So when I got to the part where Cronoll transformed and Sophia not letting go of him despite her not even remembering his or her own memory I straight up ugly cried… What a beautiful story. The two truly deserve each other and to have lots of happiness. Durand’s story is also good and hinted he isn’t human with the way he likes to “observe” human emotions and how they operate.

A lot of my friends liked the bad ending & how it was despairing. I mean, I played with a playthrough so with the knowledge I entered a bad end, and Cronoll living this “happy” life with Sophia, while the goddess of sadness literally governs memory… it was pretty clear where the writer was going with this. Darn, I’m getting hard to please.

I didn’t really understand why they had to write Cronoll as a half-brother of Charles 21st. They didn’t revisit this plot point at all.

Flatnis Lailaps (CV: Nojima Kenji)

As the #1 knight of the enemy nation, Flatnis fell hopeless in love with Sophia at first sight the first time they crossed weapons. He is the only one who can make Sophia blush early game with how straightforward and genuine he is in confessing his love for everything that she stands for: her beauty, purity, and especially strength. You see, while Sophia has struggled with three routes of NPCs finding her too “much” for them and rejecting her at various dating attempts, Sophia’s strength is what turns Flatnis on. Dubbed by his sister as a “war machine” and coming from a family of knights that prided themselves on dying in war while serving Regenate, Flatnis grew up only knowing how to do one thing and did it extremely well.

At the beginning of the route, we see a flashback of Charles VII requesting a retrial of Joan of Arc which was rejected – in the real world the appeal was successful. So this deviated from the “real world” and will become relevant later.

Sophia and Lise receive communications from Durand who says at some border the Regenate and Exrattle soldiers broke truce and started fighting each other again. Arriving at the scene, both sides say the other side struck first. Flatnis arrives and demands a one-on-one duel with Sophia. However, mid-battle the ground suddenly breaks with a poisonous gas arising from the fissure, effectively quarantining Regenate from Exrattle.

Sophia is pulled to the Regenate side. Communications are also blocked and unable to be transmitted. As such, as a prisoner of war but also guest (because Flatnis says he will be “responsible” for her), she visits Regenate, the country of steel and machinery and worship of the god of “obsessive love”, for the first time in her life.

While touring the Regenate capital, citizens are seen gravitating towards a building as a witch trial is to be held by the grand inquisitor Knox, who has a very dramatic style of conducting his trials. What is more surprising is he invites Sophia to be the “guest judge” of this trial, where a country girl is accused of killing her village with witchcraft. Using her wits, Sophia seems to do well by defending the girl by pointing out the “evidence” is planted. However, the girl reveals she is in fact a witch (like Libitina) and killed her village and purposely got caught in order to get close to Knox and kill him.

The girl screams that like many before her, she has been waiting for this moment of revenge. She starts distorting into a monster but is still overpowered by Knox, who in the previous three routes is hinted to have powers that is in a different dimension than that of a human’s. The witch is burnt at the stake.

With Sophia unable to return home, Knox entrusts Sophia to Flatnis, telling him to treat her as a true “Regenate gentleman”. He takes her shopping for extra clothes – conveniently, he has a little sister so has an idea which stores to go to – but waits outside as he believes that a gentleman does not enter intimate spaces with ladies’ interior wear.

Fortunately, Sophia is still able to talk to G o d in her dreams, who tasks her with searching for the god of obsessive love, whom G o d believes to have awakened and is disguising as a human, blending in society. The god of obsessive love is known for his ability to predict the future. Sophia asks Flatnis who says he doesn’t know much about this, but that Knox has become such an absolute authority in Regenate that it’s as if “he stole half the people’s faith from the god of obsessive love himself”.

The church suggests Sophia look for the god of obsession in Rouen, where Joan of Arc was executed. In the game, unlike the history we known, Rouen still belonged to Regenate [which is clearly alluding to England]. Charles VII failed to take back Rouen and subsequently failed to reinstate Joan of Arc’s name in game.

They arrive in Rouen. Sophia sees the stake that Joan of Arc was burnt at. The mayor tells her that the city has been trying to remove this stake and gentrify the area, but for some reason physically cannot harm it. Studying the stake, Sophia was pulled into a different realm. A girl’s voice tells Sophia she is the first saintess of pure love to visit this realm, as it belongs to the god of obsessive love. “She” introduces herself as “Tristine” and has been here for over one thousand years. Tristine tells Sophia that the god of obsessive love was actually born from the moment Joan of Arc was executed, from the feelings of despair following her death. She gives Sophia a gem infused with the power of obsessive love. Sophia asks why she would do this; aren’t they supposed to be enemies? Tristine replies Sophia is so “unconventional” as a saintess, that “perhaps some good change can come out of this.” She also remarks that Rouen originally belonged to Exrattle anyway, that Regenate is merely “borrowing” the land… before Sophia is ejected from the space.

Sophia sees Libitina waiting for her without Casper. Libitina says she is here to destroy the stake, the city, and kill everyone, because her friend Adela – the witch executed at the trial Sophia participated in – was her friend. Sophia faces off against Libitina while Flatnis deals with the sentient crying ones who can fire arrows.

The local priest dies from blocking a fatal blow for Flatnis. In his last moment, he casts a powerful curse on Libitina causing her to scream in agony. “I don’t want to lose my sanity… Please… Don’t turn me into Calamity…”

Libitina escapes but not before leaving Flatnis severely wounded. The deceased priest’s name is revealed to be Matthew Hopkins. With Knox’s encouragement, Sophia offers to look after Flatnis and help him recover from his wounds. So Sophia moves in, we get some more cute dialogue, and they discover they are fans of the same bestselling romantic novel!

We also meet Flatnis’ little sister Flora (who has no sprite smh), who is shocked that her battle fanatic brother actually got a girlfriend. She tells Sophia more about their family history, how Flatnis grew up hoping he would die an honourable death in the battlefield just like his parents.

When Flora hears about the two of them being fans of the same novel, she goes, oh would you look at me! I am an editor and actually work for the author of that novel! Why don’t I arrange a fan-meet for you two~ So she takes starry-eyed Sophia & Flatnis to meet the writer… who turns out to be Knox LMFAO. Flatnis is devastated. He tells Sophia about how they met and duelled eight years ago. Knox defeated Flatnis almost instantly; even though Flatnis was up till that point the strongest person in the country, he could tell their power levels were not in the same category.

Sophia & Flatnis go to the poisonous gas separating the two countries again with the intent of collecting a sample for analysis. However, Libitina’s hand appears from the smog and almost pulls Sophia into it. Casper appears asking for their help in order to save Libitina (even though he downplays her importance to him). He will do something about the smog but asks Sophia to pierce Libitina’s heart with her lance to purify her body so she doesn’t turn into Calamity – which is a term reserved for witches who go insane. The duo asks why Casper/Oz are so intent on killing Knox by sending people like Adela. Casper says killing Knox is only a ruse to lure the god of obsession out of hiding so he can kill him.

Casper makes the smog disappear & is taken into Regenate custody with a purified Libitina. Libitina tells Sophia that their goal is to kill all gods & living saintesses, “so that our hatred can be quenched; so that I can make Casper’s wish come true”. Flatnis is confused: what did the gods or saintesses do to you? Casper scoffs and says what a dumb question, you don’t even realize you are being used and manipulated as pawns for a greater plot that the “powers above’ will never tell you about. Before being stopped by Casper, Libitina tells Sophia that danjiki was originally invented by a certain alchemist. Humans who use danjiki become witches, who then eventually transform into Calamities. She thanks Sophia for having such a friendly conversation with her, and gives her a crystal that was broken off her body when she was still Calamity.

With the smog disappeared, there is no reason for Sophia to remain in Regenate anymore.

Before Sophia leaves, she leans down from her horse and whispers to Flatnis “I love you”. Before Flatnis realizes, she laughs and sets foot back to Exrattle.

With the chains appearing when she sees the enemy, G o d is the most pissed out of everyone. I cracked tf up when his voice started cracking because dude was just crashing out that his “daughter” ran away with the “bad boy” that “dad” never approved XD

The next clash between Exrattle and Regenate arrive sooner than we expect. However, as Sophia & Flatnis once again battle, the smog arises again with countless crying ones emerging from the ground fissures. Sophia remembers what a priest said about witches having the power to control crying ones. Resolved to save soldiers from both sides, she takes out Libitina’s crystal and shatters it. Purple crystals start emanating from Sophia’s body.

Knox emerges from the shadows, announcing that Sophia has “fallen” to witchcraft and intends to take her to trial, despite Flatnis’ pleas that she did it to save countless soldiers’ lives. Knox simply knocks Flatnis out and carries Sophia back to Regenate for trial.

We see a flashback of a girl with the same voice that Sophia heard in the other realm talking to someone.

Knox leaves Sophia in his office and leaves, telling her she can rummage through his things as she likes – not that she’s going to escape anyway. Sophia finds the following items:

1. A matching purple gem to the one Tristine gave her, being carefully preserved and made into a brooch.
2. A document detailing an alternative version of history that differs from the one from the current world. In it, Charles VII successfully reclaims Rouen and wins the retrial to restore Joan of Arc’s name.
3. Beside the document, a scribbled monologue from Knox. “This is from where fate diverged into two crossroads. When Charles failed to reclaim Rouen, this is where our world went wrong. In order for our timeline to merge into the other’s, we must endlessly trial and convict witches. Until history corrects itself, we have no choice but to continue on this wrong path.”

When Knox returns, Sophia confronts him and asks if Tristine is the goddess of obsessive love. She sees Knox’s features soften when he speaks of her, and how they made a promise a long, long time ago, so there’s no turning back.

In the meantime, Flatnis escapes out of his jail cell with the help of a Regenate soldier who defected out of gratitude for what Sophia did for them in that battle, as well as Charles the 21st/god of indulgence & Durand/goddess of sadness.

Sophia’s witch trial begins. By cleverly changing the topic of debate from “is Sophia a witch” to “are the witch trials lawful and conventional in the first place”, Sophia exposes the information she found at Knox’s office. However, Knox is almost expecting for her to expose him.

He confirms the conclusion that Sophia put together. He is sick of the world being in constant war for over a thousand years over a saintess, all because one time point deviated from the “correct” history. By conducting wrongful witch trials and executing innocent saintesses, people will realize how wrong those trials are and eventually catch on that Joan of Arc was innocent. He made this deal with his first saintess (the saintess of obsessive love) and sealed her soul eternally in his realm so that she wouldn’t die.

Knox isn’t upset that his motives were exposed at all. He laughs and says even with their knowledge and says he still intends to execute Sophia via burning at the stake. The same stake in fact in Rouen where the first Joan of Arc was sacrificed.

Sophia’s friends meet her in Rouen. However, they are no match for Knox in his full god form. Without communicating the plan in advance, both Sophia & Flatnis knew what the plan was. Flatnis leaped in the sky, as high as he did when they first met, and slashed down – cutting off Sophia’s arm infected with calamity, restoring her to a saintess again. With Sophia’s restoration, she can no longer be trialled as a witch. Knox retreats to his quarters back at the Regenate capital.

Sophia explains where her chains came from to Flatnis and asks for their first real kiss to be delayed because they still have some ass kicking left to do.

The two confront Knox together in his own realm. Tristine was his very first and last saintess. Knox basically was obsessively in love with her to the point he didn’t want her to go through what he’s putting the 17 Joan of Arcs through, wanted her to have a regular normal happy life one day without repeating the tragic cycle that saintesses are designed to live (more in Lise/G o d routes), he froze her soul in his realm which allowed him to obtain a human body vessel to hide in, even though he is a man. Tristine basically tells Knox she loves him too but she too has betrayed him because she wants him to find peace. After a strong flash of light, Tristine’s existence is wiped from this world with Knox standing in front of Sophia & Flatnis – as a powerless, mortal human.

And thus, we arrive at our salvation end. Sophia & Flatnis still duel each other all the time, yet to reach a decisive conclusion. Yet no matter who wins, the other person will go to the winner’s country, and they will marry. Knox opens a cafe & continues writing his bestselling romance novels as a commoner.

Bad End 1: Sophia gets burnt to ashes at the stake & Flatnis becomes emo for the rest of his life.

Bad End 2: Libitina/Casper become prematurely executed so Sophia doesn’t learn the truth. Regenate & Exrattle continue to suffer from the flames of war. Eventually, Sophia comes out on top, giving Flatnis the honourable death he’s yearned for since childhood.

Thoughts:

Flatnis route was truly a rollercoaster! As the first locked route, it had it all – romance, slice-of-life moments, court intrigue, and we find ourselves along with Sophia one step closer to the truth. Libitina & Casper do not appear as evil as initial impressions suggest.

1. My summary doesn’t nearly do their cute moments justice. There’s no shortage of them. This is definitely the comedy route. The way Flatnis stans Sophia is truly like no one else. Even Sophia says wow I am pretty proud and like myself pretty much, but he definitely beats me in that department lmaooo

2. While Lise is considered the “fateful” pairing with Sophia, her connection with Flatnis is also undeniable. The fact they lead very similar lives as badass warriors, have the same moral & value systems, and even share the same hobbies (I thought the comedic touch where they love the same romance novel was SO CUTE) would explain why Sophia didn’t outright reject or pull away from a very intense Flatnis, even though she’s like huhh???!!

I like the contrast where Flatnis from scene 1 is like “BE MY WOMAN” yet when they actually lived under the same roof, he stayed true to the tradition in his country & courted Sophia, keeping a respectful distance from her until she agreed for him to come closer. Until the very end, they never formally had the “what are we” talk, the way they look in each other’s eyes and knew what the plan was (when Flatnis cut off Sophia’s arm), how Sophia whispered in Flatnis’ ear “I love you” before she returned to Exrattle really gave me that historical drama feel!

3. Sophia truly understands Flatnis and doesn’t try to change him. I like how when Flora asked Sophia to talk some sense into her big brother so he isn’t as reckless and always looking for an honourable death, Sophia says while she emphasizes she cannot do that, because dying in battle is what Flatnis always valued above everything else. “Yet I hope with my influence, he will give this life to the highest battle… and not recklessly throw it away.”

4. Chicken or the egg?

Even though Flatnis says in game that he didn’t fall in love with Sophia because she is the current Joan, and rather with her personality and “Sophia” herself, is that really true? I remain skeptical. I think Sophia’s identity as Exrattle’s saintess gave opportunity for her to meet Flatnis in the battlefield. If she was some random farm girl back in her village, they would never meet. Even if they do, I don’t think Flatnis would have looked at her. However, I do believe Flatnis managed to love her even “more” by seeing her resolve in achieving the best outcome for everyone and fighting for her values.

5. Unfortunately my attention was just so divided in this route by Knox. Now knowing his true identity, if there ever is an FD I doubt he will be romanceable… First Uchronia Karatachi now him… Can we hope Otomate? Pls?

6. While this was a very exciting route. Sophia & Flatnis have undeniable chemistry. However, I just felt it was still missing an “oomph”? Despite this being advertised as the route of “enemies to lovers”, the two kind of just became lovers? I was expecting a Birushana Tomomori-esque route, where they battle their differences and slowly find their commonalities. However, the smog thing (which wasn’t really explained even till the end) gave us a very convenient plot device to let them bypass the fighting part and be live-in BF/GF instead, so I couldn’t take the fated enemies/fighting thing seriously since they were kind of allies from day 1…

Lise René Xana (CV: Uchida Yuuma)

Lise is Sophia’s servant & childhood friend. He is known for being extremely beautiful but physically weak, though has a special talent for spells. So far in the other routes, when Sophia confirms her feelings for another LI, Lise is seen fully supporting them and wishing them the best. However, what will happen finally in his own route?

Starting in chapter 1 we learn that Lise and Sophia met as children. Lise is not actually born in the Xana family but adopted. Sophia was trying to catch a boar with her traps in the forest, but catches a wounded Lise instead who asks her to leave him alone to die. The kid clearly went through something traumatic, saying his existence brings misfortune to those around him. However, just like Sophia today, she extends her arm to pull Lise up and say “I will not leave you behind”. She also gives him a nickname “Liz” that only she uses.

When Sophia started her search for a husband, literally every guy in the village goes “Uh what about Lise, you two were not dating already?” The two laugh it off because Lise also views Sophia more as family instead of a lover. They receive an invitation from the mayor of Orltie to attend the annual Joan of Arc festival. At Orltie, knights who approach Sophia also back off in shame after comparing themselves to Lise and his beauty. Some girls also confess their love to Lise, but Lise turns them down saying right now he is focused on his role of being Joan’s servant.

At the actual festival, the actress who is supposed to play as Joan got sick or something, so the mayor begs Sophia – the real Joan – to indulge everyone and play as herself. Which she does:

At the outskirts of the city, Sophia & Lise encounter an unsuspectingly asleep Libitina?! They corner a drowsy Libitina, who says she is supposed to stay here until Casper comes back. Having demonstrated she is quite the talker without Casper closing the gates on her mouth, Libitina tells the two that she also travelled to Orltie for the Joan of Arc festival, as this festival also holds significant significance to her, even as a witch. Casper returns and stops Libitina from divulging more information. He also makes an interesting observation: Sophia is the weakest Joan in history, to the point he almost feels she is “incomplete”. However, he senses a strong presence of “god’s (or should I say, g o d’s) blessing” on Lise, compared to Sophia. Hmm…

A man that Libitina addresses as “sensei” appears introducing himself as the priest of Oz. He finds it amusing that “this generation’s Joan has silver hair” which is a first. The priest threatens Casper to do something to defeat Sophia and Lise, otherwise he will do some “adjustments” on Libitina which she is very fearful of. Casper awakens his true power and turns into a humanoid figure, wounding Sophia. However, none of them realized that the real opponent was Lise all along.

Sophia wakes up in her room to Vardis who explains to her Lise’s rampage and how he carried her back to nurse her wounds. Lise has been staying by her bedside every day. When he sees Sophia open her eyes, he starts crying again saying if she really died, then he was ready to destroy this entire world. He blames himself for her wounds because he was too weak to protect her, like a good servant would. He is so afraid of losing Sophia he starts following her around everywhere and not letting her leave his line of sight. To calm his mental state, Sophia allows while trying to explain to everyone else that it’s not as it looks – they’re not actually dating. In the meantime, Lise privately approaches Cronoll & Rex asking them to give him some special lessons so he can be more useful in combat to protect Sophia.

Sophia talks to G o d about the events that transpired. He claims to not know about Lise’s past. He mentions Casper is “an artificial version of us”. He’s been speaking in riddles for 5 routes now so we are too tired to be annoyed. Anyways.

Lise starts training with Rex & Cronoll but as expected, the progress is minimal. Sophia sees Lise returning home with blood, sweat, and tears and doesn’t expose him of his excuses for how he got them (he doesn’t want Sophia to know). However, seeing his rugged side makes her view him in a different light.

Durand summons Sophia & Lise asking them to track down Oz’s movements, who seem to be centred around awakening the gods in slumber. They discover a cave housing yet another dungeon, with signs of people being tortured. Lise becomes lightheaded and says he’s been here before. He also finds a diary from “Adela” who writes she wished someone would kill her to release her the suffering of living as a monster. A photo of Adela shows a beautiful and young girl with golden locks. Unfortunately Adela is still alive and in the form of Calamity, yet using her last bits of humanity, she begs Sophia to purify the evil within her.

Sophia thrusts her lance but is unable to fight the amount of Calamity in Adela. Lise wraps his hand on top of hers and tells Sophia that he believes in her. Adela ends up being purified before dying as a human, telling the two that “every single witch was once a saintess. The Oz priest abducted us here and experimented on us to turn us into witches.

Exiting the cave, they realize the sky is red like in Rex’s route. The god of wrath has been awakened but quickly killed by the humanoid shadow that is Casper. This does not appear to be within the deal he made with Calme, who is left looking like a 🤡.

At home, Lise tells Sophia that he will no longer let anyone hurt her again; he will defeat those who want to harm her no matter what. Sophia notes that she feels a warm happiness hearing Lise’s resolve to protect her.

Lise: Sophia? What’s going on? Recently, you’ve been zoning out a lot when with me?
Sophia: Ah, well.. You’ve really matured a lot lately. You are much more masculine now.
L: Eh? What? Me? Masculine??? This is the first time you called me that. I thought I am the last person that comes to your mind when you think of masculinity.
L: I was always “Sophia’s treasured gem”…
S: So how does it feel to be called masculine for a change?
L: The fact it came from you means a lot! I’m really proud! I’m still a little confused… However, when you say these words with such a cute expression… It must be a good comment, right? I’ve always viewed you as strong, cool, and put together. However, seeing this side of you, where you blush, eyes water up, and get shy, it’s so adorable.
L: If you don’t believe me, I will say it over and over until you are convinced.
L: Sophia. You are, without a doubt, adorable. Cuter than anyone. So cute you can sway a nation. The cutest in the world! Even if I am reborn as no longer your servant, I will still say the same thing!
S: Waitwaitwait, what is going on?!
L: Sophia… You are the most lovable person to me in this entire world. I want you to remember that.

Lise, Sophia, and Flatnis go to a deserted church site as the next part of their mission to investigate Oz’s operations. Lise gets upset that Sophia has to spend time alone with Flatnis and runs to the latter declaring that he has not yet approved of him being Sophia’s fiancé. In fact, Flatnis will need to go through him first. Flatnis isn’t offended at all, laughing that he loves a good challenge, and that it’s about time they become “enemies in love”. But what is love? asks Lise.

At their destination, by touching the objects at the site, Sophia & Lise are pulled into the same realm Lise saw in his visions at the cave earlier. There’s a tree growing red crystals and it is artificially creating/transporting crying ones to cause havoc in the real world. They meet the Oz priest again, who says compared to the weakest Joan of Arc in history, he is more interested in the servant with magic powers that is so destructive that it’s only seen once in a thousand years. He continues to threaten Casper to “adjust” Libitina if he doesn’t do his bidding. Casper appears in his god form and declares that in order for Libitina to live, he has no choice but to kill both Sophia & Lise. He says the two are naive to how many sacrifices have happened in this world, “when your turn is over and no longer of use to ‘them’ then you’ll find yourselves here too.”

Sophia & Lise work together to defeat Casper, temporarily reverting him to his cat form. However, Sophia loses an eye and collapses. The priest, revealing himself as Francois Prelati, says to himself that Sophia is “just another human” but Lise has immense power that he has yet to understand. He goes back on his word and causes Libitina to turn into Calamity again. Sophia getting hurt triggers Lise to fly into rage again, saying he will kill them all if they continue to hurt his Sophia. The room starts shining with Libitina saying “the colour of you hair… wait, could you possible be..?!” Before more can be said the entire hideout is destroyed, with Francois turned into dust by Lise’s unleashed powers, “as if it were divine retribution”.

Libitina and Casper were not found at the scene in the aftermath but pronounced dead given the amount of blood (so we know they are not dead, lmao). Another two weeks pass by, and Sophia once again wakes up in her room, with Lise holding her hands, feeling her pulse at all times to reassure himself. Lise thinks to himself that he cannot lose Sophia. But, what are those chains forming around her body…? Unfortunately, her one eye is permanently gone and there’s a prosthesis in place. Sophia also asks to look at Lise’s wounds, he reluctantly undresses – because he’s had old wounds from childhood as well and have always been avoiding showing Sophia because he always wanted to remain her “perfect treasured gem” without any blemishes. He also recounts that he was unable to cast spells related to wrath during the battle, likely because Casper already killed the god of wrath.

A human Libitina, severely wounded, stumbles into a village. She recalls her childhood, praying to any god to save her from suffering. Casper is the one who answered her call. A farm woman takes Libitina in, casually revealing that this is the exact same village that Sophia & Lise are from.

Sophia & Lise continue their investigation and stumble across another door that teleports them to another part of the Oz headquarters. They find a diary from someone talking about their plan to create a god that replaces all the current ones as the only god, and for that they need their own “saintess”. They captured various young girls who were supposed to be saintesses of the current gods and experimented on them ruthlessly. Many of them couldn’t bear the torture and died. However, one record mentions a “Libitina, 6-years-old” who tolerated everything thus far.

Venturing deeper, Lise comes across a bloody pendant with the drawing of G o d. Lise cries out as this pendant belonged to his parents. He remembers everything now. He was the only survivor of this experiment, who managed to escape by feigning to be dead. Libitina was three years older than him and one of the last remaining test subjects as well. Her appearance & mannerism today doesn’t add up age wise, so he postulates there’s some kind of age-halting mechanism that Francois used on her, stunting her growth.

Having finally learned Lise’s real past, Sophia cannot help but starts crying for the first time this game for all the family he’s lost. The two also confirm their feelings for each other as lovers, but Sophia stops him from a full kiss because… thanks G o d lol.

Francois appears with Libitina and mercilessly kills her by gouging her heart out and crushing it. Lise again loses his “big sister”… or does he? Casper appears, saying all is not lost. He reveals his plan: as the sixth artificial god “resentment”, if he can overtake the core of the world “Elpis” by eliminating the other five useless “emotions”, then he can not only revive Libitina but make her immortal again. He tells Sophia that she shouldn’t stop him, as if he became the “core” of Elpis, saintesses like her will no longer need to be offered as sacrifice. Sophia becomes confused and asks for more, but Casper doesn’t waste time and disappears with Libitina’s body.

The same night, the gods of indulgence & sadness are killed by Casper. Only G o d and Knox remain. However, remains of Indulgence’s consciousness remain in Alt’s stuffed rabbit, so some of the communication devices are still operational. Knox reveals his identity as the god of obsessive love. He tells Sophia that the place she sees G o d in her dreams is the core of Elpis or this world. G o d is confined there. The operating rules of Elpis is that for human society to develop, humans need to wage endless wars with witches.

Casper confronts G o d, who seems to be expecting visitors, and pretty much surrendered without a fight and allowed himself to be absorbed by Casper. Coldly announcing that Sophia & Lise are next, Casper defeats everyone with ease. Everyone else has given up, but not Lise, who awakens his powers, is able to use G o d’s flag correctly, because he was the true 17th Joan of Arc all along.

Chapter 6 starts with G o d narrating this world’s fundamental rule, Elpis’ cycle: The saintess will be sent to war and eventually trialled and executed. Their reincarnations will be born with despair. When they are overwhelmed with negative emotion, they will cast danjiki and become witches. Witches have a limited time in Elpis & will eventually transform to Calamities, monsters with catastrophic power but no sentience of their own and purely think of destruction. Eventually, Calamities turn into dust and disappear from this world.

G o d is not happy with the way Elpis operates and wants to delay and change the cycle. (More on this in his own route.) Hence, when he found out the 17th Joan of Arc is actually a man (Lise), he thought to himself: can I use this to my advantage and hide him a little better from the eyes of this world? As such, he picked a random peasant family and gave a little blessing to their gray-haired one-year-old daughter, Sophia. “From today, you are my ‘chosen’ Joan of Arc.”

At this point, all the gods except Knox have been devoured by Casper so spells are ineffective (though Indulgence’s doll can still talk and retained his consciousness), making Lise the only one who has a fighting chance against him. Before they depart for the final battle, Lise gets a little emo and again blames himself for taking away Sophia’s original “safe and uneventful” life and dragging her into this real/fake saintess mess. Flatnis encourages Lise in his own way, saying that if he were Lise he would wants to meet Sophia a thousand times this way, allowing her to shine, and live life the way she has, meeting everyone the way she is.

Sophia also tells Lise that to her, nothing has changed, because from the beginning she has always said together they are Joan of Arc the 17th. She cannot live without Lise no matter as her servant, or now with him being the bonafide Joan. “If G o d didn’t make me the fake saintess, I would have never met and fallen in love with you.” She asks Lise to show his real hair colour. He plants a kiss of promise to return under the moon.

As they arrive in Casper’s realm, they see Libitina being sealed in a crystal much like how Tristine was in Knox’s route. Casper explains even though Libitina’s body was changed to be 18 years old and frozen there, mentally she remained 6 years old as of when Lise left the cult. Casper answered to Libitina’s prayers and became the sixth “emotion” to arrive in Elpis. The cycle of Elpis has been allowed to go on for long enough. He wants to destroy all other five emotions, take over control of Elpis, & rebuild this world: with only witches and crying ones.

What ensues is a talk-no-jutsu. Since the “gods” in this world are actually just emotions, Lise asks Casper how he could talk about eliminating emotions when he feels such intense love for Libitina. Casper starts doubting himself but the die was cast far too long ago and there’s no going back.

During the climax of the fight, Sophia offers to sacrifice herself to create one moment of distraction for Lise to eliminate Casper as the true “Joan”.

Sophia uses the last remaining of her life to close in on Casper and deal one decisive blow, burning to ashes in the process. Smiling like the very first Joan of Arc, she says “It’s so great to be born into this world” and dies. G o d’s voice rings within Casper’s body. Because Casper has realized pure love for Libitina, this means G o d (or pure love) must remain alive given he still has a believer.

Casper is defeated. Lise falls to the ground and starts crying. Sophia’s soul floats to an unknown space where she hears G o d talking to her. He playfully says, my my, even though you’re a fake, I wasn’t going to let you suffer such a bad ending.

Libitina is reincarnated into a nun at the church, living in Lise’s village as his older sister. She finds a stray black cat and names it Casper. Two years have passed. Lise is back home practicing as a village doctor. It is once again the village’s annual festival of La Pucelle. Placing his lantern in the river, Lise cries again wishing Sophia was still here.

Chains start appearing pulling Lise’s arm towards something. Meanwhile in Sophia’s POV, chains also start appearing with the narration saying “this is the end to your pilgrimage”. She hears Lise crying beside the river.

Bad End 1: Sophia dies. Lise destroys the entire world and becomes the new overruling emotion “Obsession” with a resurrected Sophia as “Regret”. All the humans have been wiped out in Elpis, with only witches and crying ones roaming, just like what Casper wanted.

Bad End 2: This is a premature ending where Sophia never wakes up after losing her eye. Lise awakens his powers as Joan and destroyed the entire nation of Regenate with his powers, leading to his “salvation”.

Thoughts:

In this route, we uncover 80% of the truth about this world & see how Lise & Sophia go from saintess/follower to lovers. It was especially refreshing to see Lise despite his 重い comments, never harboured lust or possessiveness towards Sophia until in his own route. I’m not saying that I don’t like yanderes or the “I’ve always secretly loved you” trope but Lise’s own development from viewing Sophia as his religion/reason to live (he literally thinks she’s too good for him and doesn’t even dare think about her romantically), to wanting to become physically stronger to protect her, to realizing he actually already has the power to protect her, and that he doesn’t want others (such as Flatnis who definitely stole a bit of the spotlight) to fulfill this role by her side. As advertised this is a route of Pure Love and such a beautiful story to witness.

Lise is not a conventional poster boy. He starts out as fragile, feminine, and soft. He cries multiple times in this route. He gets pouty and cute when Sophia compliments him or seeing her spend time with others. He is not a Lupin or Akaza where they are just always so suave and have the situation under control and are the safe places for their heroines to hide in. When Sophia is wounded, he is helpless and scared. However, his desire to protect and support Sophia is so strong he invokes the feeling of pure love eventually and discovers his powers.

I also love how in the salvation end Lise realized his journey with Sophia has broadened his horizons and view of this world. His world used to be only Sophia but she has shown him the world has so much beyond her. He became part of her village, found other friends along the way, and shifted his mindset from “protecting Sophia” to “protecting this world (that Sophia loves)”. This again, deviates from a traditional “heavy yandere” mindset to a pure love one.

I was not expecting Libitina’s backstory and the tragic nature of how all witches were once saintesses, being treated as sacrificial lambs to keep the Elpis machine running. As for Casper, he is similar to Knox. They both fell in love with their saintesses and wanted to destroy the world in order for their saintess’ wellbeing – the yandere love – while Lise was able to rise above and beyond. If he doesn’t, then we get bad ending 1 which is also delicious with that CG.

The route was slightly longer than I would have liked as in the middle there was some back and forth with plentyyy of hints dropped that Lise is the one with actual blessed powers while Sophia doesn’t. However, given this is the poster boy route & this means I get to hear more Uchida Yuuma I’ll allow it.

At this point, what remains on our mind is how Elpis’ cycle came to be. Why did Knox start laughing when he hears pure love telling Sophia to call him G o d? What about Isaac?? Everything will be answered in —

G o d (CV: Kaji Yuuki)

In the final route of the game, if Sophia takes her saintess duties seriously, telling G o d that “my heart belongs to no one”, eventually one of her dreams will take her back to the scene where the first Joan was burned at the stake, and G o d crying in the background. “Who is to blame? This world? Humans who wage the wars? No. We are to blame, for being arrogant and cruel… We are the reason why those innocent girls suffer such tumultuous fates.” “Awakening” to reality (in her dream with G o d), Sophia caresses his face even though there are no tears.

Sophia asks G o d if it’s true that by falling in love and kissing someone she will stop being a saintess. G o d tries to bluff but he’s so bad at lying it clearly is true. Instead, Sophia asks why he also has chains on his body, don’t those hurt? G o d is like this is fashion okay lmfaoooo.

Sophia still goes to the capital to find a husband. However, sitting at home one afternoon she hears G o d’s voice in her head when awake! This takes quite a bit of power but G o d says now he can cockblock her efforts even when awake. This way she will never find a husband! Ha ha ha (evil laugh)!

One night, Sophia dreams of herself as the first Joan of Arc being burned at the stake again and seeing G o d watching her sadly. Using all her might, she breaks free of the chains tying her to the stake and reaches for him. Isaac’s voice rings telling the two “there’s a colourful future with endless possibilities awaiting you. You cannot be tied down by these chains forever. I will pay the price so you two can experience the various emotions in this world on your journey. Now and into the forever future.”

Sophia reaches for something in her sleep. “Mmm stop it~” She opens her eyes and…!

G o d for some reason got isekaied to the real world from Elpis core. Not only has he lost his powers, meaning he can no longer float and has to learn like a baby how to walk, he now unlocks human feelings such as hunger and has to even learn to chew. Sophia pauses her dating activities to figure out how he travelled here and help him settle in to the real world.

Sophia shows him around the city, retelling him the traditions of how different gods came to be, showing him the foods that the first Joan of Arc loved. Spending the afternoon in a secret flower field, G o d asks if Sophia is upset that all he would talk about were the older generations of Joan of Arc, when the current one, herself, is standing in front of him. Sophia says not at all, if anything, I want to thank you for watching over every single one of us over the last thousand of years. However, he can’t walk around anymore calling him self “God” as it’s already made for few awkward conversations. Sophia gives G o d a new name – “Iriser” – in the mortal world, standing for “shining with rainbow colours” based on his eye colour.

Iriser laughs and says Sophia is the first Joan to give him a name. However, he likes it. This name belongs to him, and not associated with his identity as “pure love”. He tells Sophia he will repay her favour – by making a rainbow appear in the sky. For the first time, he learns what “happy” feels like.

Ricordo contacts Sophia & asks her to investigate the jewels in that same forest where Indulgence casts illusions, along with Iriser/Cronoll/Vardis. Sophia peeks and sees Elize also facing his fears: shadows of girls asking why he abandoned all of them. Iriser appears unfazed and makes a eating crunching motion – like he’s eating a peach – and devours those illusions like how he devoured the other emotions in previous routes. Everyone passes their tests and meet the rabbit once again. The rabbit this time talks about meeting Isaac around ten years ago, and mentions “the chains of Elpis”, and how in order to keep Indulgence in slumber, Isaac destroyed the human body that Indulgence prepared to use in this world. Libitina arrives saying she needs the rabbit’s eyes, which is one part of the puzzle, in order to revive Indulgence. Casper arrives and stops Libitina from talking more and overpowers everyone. Desperate, Sophia turns to Iriser for his blessing, who goes like louder~I can’t hear you~

Casper realizes that Iriser is not human and is shocked how he escaped the core to be in the human world. Iriser asks Sophia if she will be angry if he says he wants to spare Libitina (because she is the reincarnation of the 3rd Joan of Arc – was mentioned in Lise route), “she was someone who used to be very important to me”. Casper backs off, but not before saying that Elize is manipulating Sophia for his own gain.

To thank Sophia for letting Libitina go, Iriser gives a hint: “My intentions are actually quite similar to Casper’s. So if you figure out what he wants, you will be close to my motive as well?”

So far, the protagonists know Casper wants to resurrect the gods/emotions. Durand asks them to “seal” the flow of emotion which would ultimately awaken these gods. However, on the way they are met with hordes of crying ones & Libitina who came alone wanting to prove herself to Casper. Francois/the Oz priest also arrives and turns Libitina into Calamity now that Casper isn’t watching. Lise casts a simple spell which purifies Libitina. However, this was all part of Francois & Calme’s plan which awakens Wrath. There is a bit of technicality to this as multiple conditions have to be met in order to awaken a god, one of them being “saintess using their power”. People didn’t know Lise is the “saint” here but he inadvertently fulfilled this criterion.

Casper appears late & kills Wrath. He then comes for Iriser, who says do what you want, I’m still mostly human and not at my peak form, killing me right now does not give you enough power to fight Elpis. Casper asks why Iriser puts through all his saintesses – including Libitina – through Elpis’ cycle, allowing them to walk into a fate of destruction. Iriser appears nonchalant, “even if they are saintesses, they are free to choose what to do with their lives.” “But if they were never saintesses to begin with, you will never meet them, no? Including Libitina.” Casper doesn’t want to waste more time as he needs to kill the other gods, and leaves with Calme, who tells Rex to learn about this world’s truth before doubting his morals.

Iriser debriefs the protagonists about how Casper was artificially created, how his saintesses all underwent experiments and Libitina being the only survivor and now Casper’s “saintess”, how Casper wants to kill all the other gods and become the only one in this world, or Elpis. He also tells them about Elpis’ cycle. However, Iriser did not create this cycle nor is he satisfied with it. He wants to challenge this cycle himself, but perhaps in a different method than Casper’s.

Sophia’s village holds another festival of Joan. Inspecting the lanterns, Iriser says the names of Joans are incomplete. He recites every single generation’s name. He remembers the time he spent with every single one of them, how each one of them smiled and said they will reach salvation for Exrattle. “Why can’t we just fight amongst ourselves as the omnipotent beings we are said to be? Why repeat this stupid cycle through saintesses as proxy?” Is this what it means to be… sad? He then tells Sophia she too is important, because she is the “very only Joan that I chose”. Sophia doesn’t understand this statement but chooses to let it slide.

Iriser senses that Casper has also eliminated Sadness and Indulgence. However, through Alt’s doll, he is still able to directly talk to the consciousness of Indulgence, who calls Iriser “gluttonous”. Alt asks Sophia to head to a battlefield where Exrattle & Regenate is fighting. Supposedly, Exrattle struck first breaking the truce. However, the details were a bit suspicious… Sophia asks Iriser to bless her with the power to “break all soldiers’ weapons” and literally proceeds to beat everyone’s ass.

However, as Sophia almost takes a fatal hit, without thinking Iriser blocks it for her. In a fit of rage, he yells “only I am allowed to decide Sophia’s fate!” His wounds disappear, presumably due to Sophia’s faith in him. Knox appears and says it’s interesting that Pure Love somehow also awakened obsessive love. Before the two can bicker, Casper appears and absorbs both of them, just like that…

Everyone is taken to Casper’s realm. Lise awakens his “John of Arc” powers. Iriser’s hand suddenly breaks through Casper’s chest and thanks him for “doing the hard work and collecting all the emotions in one place.” So far, every god has a powerful ability: either governing physical strength, memory, illusions, or prediction of the future… yet what does Iriser do? To devour other emotions.

A long time ago, Iriser challenged Elpis and lost, hence was chained to the core and imprisoned there. Hence, his only method of devouring other emotions is through Casper. To hide his real “Joan”, he even created the pawn that is Sophia. Now that everything is over, Casper has no use anymore either. He is devoured too, along with the four other emotions.

With Charles the 21st’s advice, Sophia & friends visit Ryumeitou again and awakens the slumbering “heart dragon” (who is a relative of the one that went berserk and was defeated in the common route). The dragon fills in the last bit of the world lore:

1. Those “gods” are never true deities but simply emotions that govern this world. Using humans’ feelings as a source of faith, these emotions grow stronger.
2. When they are overwhelmed, they clash with other emotions – such is war. As long as mankind existed, those feelings will continue to develop & they cannot be exterminated.
3. As such, Elpis’ solution is to wage endless wars, as the loser of the war will go into temporary hibernation and make the world somewhat balanced?
4. To avoid massive bloodshed, Elpis decides to have human proxies of emotions – with the first saintess of pure love being Joan of Arc.
5. Those wars gave rise to further negative emotions that were not encompassed in the initial five emotions. They turn into nightmares and gave rise to crying ones.
6. Falling in love does make the saintess lose powers. However, it is meant as a punishment mechanic because after losing their powers, those saintess die a brutal death anyway as witches. The only person who did this ended up killing herself.
7. If Iriser’s plan comes to fruition, the world doesn’t actually get destroyed (unlike Casper’s version). So isn’t this… a good idea? However, Sophia & Lise feels this is not the entire story & there is definitely something Iriser is hiding from them. They will not know the answer unless they meet in person again…

The dragon opens the gate to Sophia, not Lise – as the gate opens to those Iriser trusts only – to the core of Elpis, for the final battle. On the way, Cronoll stops to fend off the crying ones with Durand, who shows his true form. Rex stays behind to fight Calme who in this route, serves Iriser’s plan. Vardis and Flatnis stay behind to keep Knox – who is now a puppet of Iriser – at bay.

Sophia & Lise confront Iriser who still refuses to tell the truth and says this is the best trade deal in the history of trade deals that will make the world a better place so they should just allow him to go ahead with it. Seeing that the conversation has ended, Iriser starts using all emotions’ powers to fight.

While Libitina distracted Iriser, Sophia charges to Iriser and bangs her head into his!… and gets pulled to the inner core of Elpis by Isaac, whose ancestor is the very first Joan of Arc. Isaac shows Sophia memory fragments of Iriser’s past: how he deceived each Joan of Arc, thinking they are chess pieces on his board. However, by spending time with each one of them, he became drawn to their selflessness, purity, and kindness, and started falling in love with each one of them, before losing them to the Elpis machine. After 16 cycles of this, he could no longer take it anymore.

When Lise was born, he decided to use it to his advantage, so he wouldn’t be sent to the warring front between Exrattle/Regenate at an early age and die an unnecessary death again. In the meantime, he discovered Libitina & Casper’s plan. He can also use this. After all, the only price to pay is his & other emotions’ existence… However, during this process, he fell in love with Sophia – even though she is not a real saintess – and hesitated briefly on whether he still wants to die for this final cause, before resolving to go through with plan.

Isaac asks if Sophia still wants to stop Iriser, having seen his motives, which are truly selfless and kind, like all the previous Joan of Arcs who fought in his stead. Sophia replies “of course”. Isaac says he will help her. He tries to summon his powers, but Charles the 21st has told the truth of Elpis’ cycle to his citizens who now reject Iriser as their “god”. Lise & Libitina chant a spell together, as the current and previous Joan of Arcs. Sophia carries Iriser and charges into the core of Elpis: “If you don’t want me to die then focus on protecting yourself instead of becoming the new core of Elpis!”

Isaac’s voice appears saying they have been reincarnated over and over out of concern for Iriser, but he supposes this is the last time and there is nothing more to worry about, as he now has all the emotions and will be able to grasp the meaning of true love and happiness of life.

Sophia wakes up with a human Iriser back in the flower field where he got his name. All of the emotions became transformed into humans and start new lives on earth. Sophia leans in to kiss him.

Friendship end: As the title suggests, kind of like the “full completion CG” where Sophia travels the world with everyone including a human Iriser.

Thoughts:

This was an unexpectedly sweet route! Going in I wasn’t expecting this much romance as most of the time routes like these end up being more focused on the truth. However, I was very wrong! I don’t tend to do well with the “falling in god” theme romance routes (see Himuka/OlySoi) so I remain less convinced. That being said, there are plenty romantic and cute scenes for those who are fans of him!

Iriser went from good to evil and to good again in his own route. He has the purest love for this world, to the point he wanted to quietly sacrifice himself in order to create a better world for everyone… Hence, it’s not surprising why all the Joan of Arcs and even his chosen one are so selfless and strong-willed; and why Isaac/first Joan of Arc kept being reincarnated because they truly cared for him and didn’t want him to just be a pawn in “salvation”.

Personally, I preferred the friendship end a lot more. Either way, this was a lovely ending to this epic.

Final Thoughts

Thus concludes my playthrough of this year’s Otome Odyssey!

1. Sophia

It is impossible to talk about this story at all without discussing our protagonist. One of the most distinguished, strong, mature, responsible, and kind heroines in otome! She truly saves the day. Her sense of humour and sarcasm is perfect. I am so grateful Nakayama (who is also the scenario for: Code Realize, Mistonia, and the upcoming Dorico no Toshokan) for bringing yet another unforgettable and irreplaceable heroine to our world. There is no damsel in distress here. This is the badass & intelligent girl boss that non-JP fandom have been asking for.

I full-heartedly agree with all the praise I’ve seen for Sophia online. However, to play devil’s advocate everything comes in two sides. The fact Sophia is so well-developed before the game even started means she does not have much room left to grow. She saves Rex, saves Vardis, saves Cronoll, saves Iriser, works together with Flatnis, and saves each other with Lise. However, we have way too many of those “damsel in distress” otome heroines (from beginning to end) so I’m definitely welcoming of a kick-ass mainstream J-otome heroine from beginning to end lol.

2. The plot

Crazy Chain’s world comprises of five overarching emotions who arise from people’s feelings (kind of similar to Reine des Fleurs?) who are in constant conflict. The world would combust or something if all those pent-up frustrations were not dealt with, so Elpis – the world’s core came up with a temporizing plan to sacrifice saintesses as proxies of these emotions and put some of them temporarily to sleep at a time. It is an interesting concept and made much more sense as I reread the game when writing this review, but the first time it was very confusing and convoluted.

I started on Rex and Vardis routes, so when I saw Sophia claim “love is wrath (that drives you to protect your beloved)”, “love is indulgence (to live your life to the fullest despite your pre-determined fate)”, I was fully expecting five routes of “love is [emotion in route]” then it didn’t happen in Cronoll’s route lol.

3. Flatnis

I still ranked Flatnis route high but man his route was such lost potential. To the point I dedicated a separate topic in the final thoughts instead of writing everything in his section. While it was cute and funny, it got so overshadowed by Knox’s plot. I was expecting a lot more tension and “fateful enemy” feel to it, which the route didn’t have… 😦 The fact they had so much more in common, even more than what Sophia/Lise had. I honestly felt Flatnis/Sophia were the true fated lovers, but the game ofc focused on Lise – whose feelings interestingly developed for Sophia during the route and is more slow burn.

4. Verdict

Definitely hall of fame! Even if the game is longer than what I would have liked, it is worth every minute of your time. At times when those spell animations were flashing on screen I wondered what it would be like if this game was actually made into a typical JRPG where you can control the characters to cast spells and fight Casper/Libitina and maybe Elpis core in the end haha.

I wouldn’t mind an FD of this game! while it is complete within its own right, it would never hurt to have more fluffy scenes of post-salvation Sophia with her loved ones.

Anyways, I think this review has been long enough. Time to check out Mercari for that overpriced Lise merch XDDDD

Ranking: Lise > Cronoll > Flatnis > Rex >> Vardis = G o d/Iriser

Rating: 9/10